MUD Reviews

Star Conquest.

Alright, so I'm not going to sit here and bash them too much. But I think Star Conquest is ran by people who enjoy screwing with players and here is why.

I have been playing their spiritual successor for a bit, Miriani, and didn't have any issues, so I figured I would come check out Star Conquest.

Well I'll admit I made some huge mistakes and got myself grounded (can't fly or basically play the game). I've been punished in other forums before and they say, you have 7 days of ban, or you can't do X for Y time.

Here they just tell me I'm limited to roleplaying, which if you've played the game, it's pretty damn near impossible if you can't fly from place to place or meet up with folks. Plus, I'm gonna be totally honest, as a new player, I really don't wanna sit around and play emote talking simulator 2000. I came to fly spaceships and develop a story off flying spaceships.

Well, they took away my ability to send in support tickets, my ability to send newbie messages and wouldn't give me a defined "This is what we want." other than, "Go roleplay." which is as ambiguous as it sounds.

Eventually get this chick lindsey gainem or something who runs the game to come talk to me again and this is how that conversation went.

The admin or host as they call them, jumps into my ship and proceeds to name call and insult my character as a person, not a player. Then tells me to tell her why I shouldn't be banned. I express some heartfelt regret for my actions icly and oocly and she then goads me and tells me that it sounds like I'm calling a girlfriend after a breakup the night before.

Then proceeds to ban me and ip ban my computer for their server.

Which honestly, if you wanna ban me, cool and good. But this is after three days of limbo, not knowing what the heck they wanted to see other than "roleplay" and basically wasting a lot of my effort and time.

So while I'm impressed with some of the systems over Miriani and think that honestly Miriani and Star Conquest should literally just band together and make a super game. I will hazard you that if you aren't the super friendly, emote all day roleplaying type or the tavern sitter type rp person. Avoid Star Conquest because once they turn against you, it's all downhill from there.

You can contact me about specifics if you want. I'll be writing a few reviews just so folks don't go through the problems I went through and waste the time and effort.

But aside from bad staffing, here are my pros and cons of this moo:

Pro,

The ships are more varied than Miriani, in Miriani everyone flys pretty much the same ships with a few specialty ships. In Star Conquest, the ships are much more robust based on the organization you pick and your points.

The atmospheric scooping is more entertaining than Miriani's and so is the Asteroid Mining minigame where you have to fight off poacher drones from stealing your metal you're collecting from the asteroids. This is cool on a few axis, one you can haul asteroids in Star Conquest, and then mine them, so it gives a purpose both rp wise and practically to have people haul asteroids.

Con,

It's really ****ing grindy, expect to be salvaging and doing other menial tasks for quite some time to earn your industry points to buy new ships and such. Some of the requirements in points go up into the thousands and while there is a variety of tasks, it seems the best ones are solo tasks, so you're stuck in your ship by yourself grinding away at points.

Also, the cadet system sounds great on paper, but after you get a hang of the it's limiting. If you do play there, pick the standard pilot and just wait to get your background approved before you jump in the game, otherwise you hit the cadet limit of 25 points SUPER fast and you're stuck with a thumb up your butt waiting and waiting.

On that point, this isn't a game that has their character apps down like so many others out there, it takes weeks or months for a character app to be reviewed and critiqued. In fact I just got mine back after a week or week and a half basically saying it was too generic. They want you to write college level biographies about your make belief character to be able to become a standard pilot.

So if you're used to submitting a request and getting it back right away, well, don't be surprised on this game.

There is no OOC or CHAT channel in this game, only the newbie channel, so if you're stuck or having issues you have to use the support command which is a direct line to the admin, but the problem is, as stated earlier, they aren't about much or if they are, they aren't answering support tickets. So a lot of the questions you want answers to you have to search through mountains of helpfiles or veil it in a crazy ic way to get the answer.

I don't want you to think this is JUST because I got banned I'm doing it. Even if I was still playing today I would critique the game and it's leadership after all that I've been put through.

I have a staff member that is very fond of that Star Conquest and used to play it years ago. She did confirm some of your grievances, which is why I'm posting here. I do have just a little advice for you from an Administrator.

If you like the game like it seems you do and want to continue to play some day you should write the administration about your concerns as a player that is leaving. At least you won't burn a bridge. The worst thing you can do is belittle it here or elsewhere and make enemies of the administration as they likely won't welcome you back.

Since you left to this other game, perhaps next time just post the greatness about Miriani and leave out Star Conquest completely. I know you are just trying to warn people, but perhaps just say: I'm a former Star Conquest player which I had problems with (write me for specifics), but now I Love Miriani and here's why: etc.

I have a staff member that is very fond of that Star Conquest and used to play it years ago. She did confirm some of your grievances, which is why I'm posting here. I do have just a little advice for you from an Administrator.

If you like the game like it seems you do and want to continue to play some day you should write the administration about your concerns as a player that is leaving. At least you won't burn a bridge. The worst thing you can do is belittle it here or elsewhere and make enemies of the administration as they likely won't welcome you back.

Since you left to this other game, perhaps next time just post the greatness about Miriani and leave out Star Conquest completely. I know you are just trying to warn people, but perhaps just say: I'm a former Star Conquest player which I had problems with (write me for specifics), but now I Love Miriani and here's why: etc.

Good Luck!

Well, the ironic thing if you read both of their help files and websites. SC came first, shut down, then Miriani people started Mirani because SC was gone, SC came back and Miriani was already it's own thing. So honestly, I don't know why they haven't just reached out to one another and combined their games.

So as I said above, pros and cons to each of the games and if they had a baby, I think it would be near perfect.

But, honestly I don't wanna be that banned guy who says, STAY AWAY, like it's the plague, many people play it and many people enjoy it. I'm just warning to have a bit of caution when you deal with their staff or they will put you in a no win spiral like they did me the last few days. But I'm a mechanics and rp guy. So I can't just sit in a room and emote for hours, but I also don't want a hack and slash, I would say I'm fifty fifty.

I truly intend to follow up with them sometime in the future when they calm down and see if there is any way to play there again.

Derail:

Which is honestly why I didn't like New Worlds. It had great rpers, but it did require a buttload of killing things to get to level X before you could be a peon or whatever level. I didn't like having to grind through all the training yards and such.

I did see some great RPers in my time there and even once think I got close to being recruited to be a thief, but the grind of killing things and healing and eating to heal. Just wasn't my cup of tea. I do hope that you guys keep developing the system though and if any of that changes. Make sure to post about it so people like me can log back on.

Rather than telling our side of the story, which would probably turn the thread into a "he-said, she-said" fight, we feel it would be informative to link to a thread on a completely different game's website.

Rather than telling our side of the story, which would probably turn the thread into a "he-said, she-said" fight, we feel it would be informative to link to a thread on a completely different game's website.

Well I'll admit I made some huge mistakes and got myself grounded (can't fly or basically play the game). I've been punished in other forums before and they say, you have 7 days of ban, or you can't do X for Y time.

Here they just tell me I'm limited to roleplaying, which if you've played the game, it's pretty damn near impossible if you can't fly from place to place or meet up with folks. Plus, I'm gonna be totally honest, as a new player, I really don't wanna sit around and play emote talking simulator 2000. I came to fly spaceships and develop a story off flying spaceships.

I am a regular player on Star Conquest, and I want to address some of the points you're making from the perspective of someone who played a character that was actually in a similar situation as yours. Admittedly, I've never used scripting to cheat or whatever it was exactly that earned you your initial punishment (you alluded to it having something to do with aliasing a chain of a couple commands on the game's OOC board) since they're explicitly against the rules of the game, but I've had a cadet character taken out of play for completely in-character reasons before.

In my character's case, she tried to activate the self-destruct on the space bus between two stations. It was poorly considered, and she did so as much out of boredom as an ill-conceived attempt to test the auth code she'd figured out how to set on the NPC ship. The consequences were dramatic. She got put in an even more limited situation than your character was (to my knowledge anyway) since there's not a whole lot to do while in prison waiting for the space lawyers to do their stuff.

I don't know if you got a chance to see the prison moon Dure, but for the benefit of other readers the prison on Dure has a communicator jammer, prisoners can't leave the prison, and there is only a limited window of time for visitors to show up and talk each day. Characters accused of human trafficking, assault, public indecency, and other crimes end up there while diplomatic lawyering progress is made by the character's government.

At that point, my character was about ten days old and had been waiting on feedback on or approval of a second attempt at a profile for about five days. I could have gone and abandoned the character, or just remained logged off for the duration of the sentence, but instead I kept active. Visitors would turn up and I'd talk to them. The League Voice (an elected player character who acts as a liaison between the NPC government and the player characters) came and took a statement to pass along to the government.

I took it as a chance to try to get into my character's head. During interactions with other players I wrote my cadet as an unhappy and remorseful person since I figured that would be how she would feel. I didn't have an approved profile at that point, but I used the more general elements from the profile I had submitted as a guide and did my best with it anyway.

Within a day of the statement being forwarded, after a second round of visitors, my character's sentence was commuted and she was made a full pilot.

You actually had a lot more to work with, since your character was just grounded. There's an extensive system of automated passenger transport your character could have used to go visit different locations. He had access to his communicator still, and could freely contact anyone he wanted to. That's huge, if you're trying to fix a reputation.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cerelum

Well, they took away my ability to send in support tickets, my ability to send newbie messages and wouldn't give me a defined "This is what we want." other than, "Go roleplay." which is as ambiguous as it sounds.

I've only ever heard of people getting their ability to use the support ticket system suspended for being abusive. I've seen people get their ability to use the newbie help channel restricted for being deliberately unhelpful or for using it like a casual chat channel.

Being told to go roleplay isn't unreasonable in a roleplay enforced game. Your character had just had his cadet license suspended, that should have been a major thing to him! He'd just spent a year or two trying to get qualified to even be a cadet. Losing that qualification inside of a week, because of reasons, is a good driver for roleplay.

I remember you stated something in character along the lines of the suspension being because people had complained about your behavior. I'd seen enough of your character outright insulting other characters to see how it could have been a legit chain of events. The NPC government would have been extra sensitive to disruptive pilots and complaints from their own people about problem cadets given other things that had happened earlier this year (a couple of new pilots plotting to frame an entire crew as being crazy for the sake of petty revenge, and one of those pilots planning on a false flag attack to further disrupt things).

Sure, it sucks that the game world pushed back on your character, but you had options. Off the top of my head, you could have tried looking for ways to discredit the pilots who were Harvey's loudest and most visible detractors. You could have offered a "tell all interview" with an NPC news reporter, to try to shame the government into giving Harvey his license back. You could have hired a detective to dig up dirt on Harvey's enemies. You could have had Harvey lie and say what people wanted to hear. You could have had Harvey seek out the help of NPC groups, or even of sympathetic player characters, to try to establish that your character's detractors were just bellyaching and he was totally fit to be a cadet.

Instead, your character released a rapidly reproducing alien carnivore species in the middle of Manhattan, New York. In the game history this same species of carnivore has destroyed the ecosystems of regions the size of small continents, infested space stations, mauled children, and in general been a complete pest when not carefully managed. While it was entertaining seeing how you made the other players jump and search the streets for loose aliens, it wasn't what I'd call good roleplay (unless you intended Harvey to be an unrepentant child, I guess?). It kind of proved the point that Harvey wasn't cut out to have access to the stuff civilian pilots can get hold of.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cerelum

I will hazard you that if you aren't the super friendly, emote all day roleplaying type or the tavern sitter type rp person. Avoid Star Conquest because once they turn against you, it's all downhill from there.

The game is a roleplay enforced game. You don't need to be super friendly, but no man is an island either. Networking is important for characters who want to advance their own agendas. Actively antagonizing and insulting pretty much everyone will handicap any character, though it wouldn't stop them cold unless more was involved.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cerelum

It's really ****ing grindy, expect to be salvaging and doing other menial tasks for quite some time to earn your industry points to buy new ships and such. Some of the requirements in points go up into the thousands and while there is a variety of tasks, it seems the best ones are solo tasks, so you're stuck in your ship by yourself grinding away at points.

Also, the cadet system sounds great on paper, but after you get a hang of the it's limiting. If you do play there, pick the standard pilot and just wait to get your background approved before you jump in the game, otherwise you hit the cadet limit of 25 points SUPER fast and you're stuck with a thumb up your butt waiting and waiting.

Getting access to better gear is the main reason to grind, but even a cadet can be crew on someone else's ship. I would wager that your perspective was skewed by running a character who had insulted and alienated many of the player characters who were most likely to give him help and work alongside him in group tasks.

I do think you missed the point if you're suggesting that people not roleplay in a roleplaying game. The profile's not a hurdle to clear to go grind. It's one of the ways to define the type of character you want to play.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cerelum

...it takes weeks or months for a character app to be reviewed and critiqued. In fact I just got mine back after a week or week and a half basically saying it was too generic. They want you to write college level biographies about your make belief character to be able to become a standard pilot.

So if you're used to submitting a request and getting it back right away, well, don't be surprised on this game.

Yeah, that's a legit issue. The staff is small, and they have standards that require a little thoughtfulness to meet.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cerelum

There is no OOC or CHAT channel in this game, only the newbie channel, so if you're stuck or having issues you have to use the support command...

There actually is an OOC chat channel for messages to the hosts, but I suspect you either never turned it on, or had access to it revoked at some point.

If you're stuck in a way that results from a bug or something, they're pretty quick to respond to a support ticket. Maybe a day at the very worst, in my experience. If you're stuck because of other players forming an outraged mob in response to your character releasing aliens in Manhattan, it's different. Your character had alienated himself from most of the other pilots paying attention when he got jumped by that group. It wasn't a surprise it took you awhile to find anyone who wanted to help your character. He'd spent days being a jerk to people.

I remember a host did reply to you on the OOC message board, and told you outright that if no players wanted to help you in a reasonable amount of time that an NPC would eventually take pity on your character.

This thread actually got me to try tar Command last night. I created an account and character, got into the Alliance rooms and I was reading the docs and considering which alliance to choose. The two rooms full of information that I saw were well written and the background seemed reasonable. The MOO code is one that is unfamiliar to me but not so alien that I couldn't figure it out. I've never played a SciFi M** so I was getting very excited.

I was abruptly banned with no explanation. I literally interacted with NO ONE. My email was valid. My name was unique but certainly not unreasonable.

I don't know what happened and haven't received a reply but it's not a great start on their end.

This thread actually got me to try tar Command last night. I created an account and character, got into the Alliance rooms and I was reading the docs and considering which alliance to choose. The two rooms full of information that I saw were well written and the background seemed reasonable. The MOO code is one that is unfamiliar to me but not so alien that I couldn't figure it out. I've never played a SciFi M** so I was getting very excited.

I was abruptly banned with no explanation. I literally interacted with NO ONE. My email was valid. My name was unique but certainly not unreasonable.

I don't know what happened and haven't received a reply but it's not a great start on their end.

Sorry about that, sounds like a staff member got a bit overzealous - the OP has been creating multiple accounts every day to disrupt the game (as well as harassing/mocking us via our support systems) and it sounds like you got caught in the crossfire. Can you send in a request to http://moo.squidsoft.net:3333/support ? I'll send you a thing in PMs so we can confirm it's you.

To follow up, Staff at Star Conquest sorted out the problem and got me going. The players were extremely welcoming and helpful. I will be giving it a good shot over the next few days. Looks good so far.

Sorry about that, sounds like a staff member got a bit overzealous - the OP has been creating multiple accounts every day to disrupt the game (as well as harassing/mocking us via our support systems) and it sounds like you got caught in the crossfire. Can you send in a request to http://moo.squidsoft.net:3333/support ? I'll send you a thing in PMs so we can confirm it's you.

Funny thing is I haven't created any more account for days now, so they are so afraid I'm trying to sneak in they are banning legit players. Sad truth of the matter though is that with vpns, proxies and all the like, there is no way to ban people from playing a mud unless you take to draconian tactics like banning all new players with a gmail, yahoo, etc etc which just hurts you in the long run.